Innovation

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Innovation in Context 2: Scaling Up

Continuing the conversation we started last year, this second installment of our workshop series will focus on how to scale up innovation. It will look at how individuals, companies, firms, and the ecosystem itself can turn the success of a single popular idea or product into a larger environment cultivating sustained innovation. But how does this happen? How do we harness the true diversity of our communities to scale up innovation? How do we build sufficient capacity for these ecosystems? In short, how do we unleash the true innovation potential of our society? (For full Youtube playlist, please click here).

Panel 1 – The Social Context of Scale

This panel discusses the nature of scale—the notion that, as firms, cities, and innovation ecosystems grow, it becomes less expensive for them to supply services. This process not only pertains to the economy; it has cultural, social, and diversity implications. Invoking different social and theoretical perspectives, this panels will ask what are the challenges, advantages, and underlying rationales of scaling up innovation?

Panel 2 – Scaling Access for Women and Minorities

This panel looks at what it takes for diverse communities to enter the innovation ecosystem. By looking at investments that help women and minorities to develop innovative firms, this panel examines the entry points created by diverse forms of capital. It also attends to the role of immigration policy.

Panel 3 – Scaling the Firm

This panel looks at the transformation of firms, both small and large, from within. Firms operating in different countries have different needs; for example, US patent law is friendlier to American firms than Canadian ones—and the reverse is not true for American firms in Canada. This panel examines the growth process of firms by providing insiders’ perspectives.

Panel 4 – Policy for Scaling Up

In the Canadian context, the current approach to innovation policy is characterized by a hands-off attitude to Canadian innovations, swelling intellectual property protections for foreign companies, a patent regime that is too generous, and strained publicly-funded research universities. This panel looks at what policies finance firms going global. It examines how to build capacity through education, direct government interventions, superclusters, accelerators, standard setting, and international trade negotiations.

With Iain Gillespie (Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research and Enterprise, University of Leicester), Roni Zehavi (CEO, Cyperspark), Leah Lawrence (CEO, Sustainable Development Technology Canada) – Moderator: Bassem Awad (Director of International Property Law and Innovation, CIGI)